An Aberdeen man who traded indecent images of children and “vile” stories with others online narrowly avoided jail yesterday.
Sheriff Jack Brown described messages Brian Hay sent to his associates as “disgusting”.
Police raided Hay’s home on Moir Crescent last September after receiving a tip-off that the former taxi call handler had been sharing indecent images of youngsters on Twitter.
The 33-year-old previously admitted possessing and creating indecent images between March 5 and August 30, 2017, and to distributing files of that nature between October 3, 2016 and June 21, 2017.
Aberdeen Sheriff Court heard that some of the images included girls between the ages of five and 15 engaged in sexual activity with adults.
Officers also found online forum posts where Hay talked about wanting to rape a nine-year-old.
Sentencing him yesterday, Sheriff Brown said: “The question in my mind was is it a deep-rooted difficulty you had or were the communications simply bravado that you could show off and be as disgusting as the people you were communicating with?
“The report before me suggests this may be the latter.”
Hay was ordered to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work within nine months.
He also faces three years of both social work supervision and behaviour rehabilitation through the Moving Forward, Making Changes programme.
The sheriff also warned that if he breached any of the conditions in place, he would be locked up for “three to four” years.
